Jimquisition: It's Not A Video Game!

[Darklupus]

A game has the possibility to be not only for competition, but for no competition whatsoever. What I mean is that a game can just be simply for fun as well. And even if someone doesn't think it's for fun doesn't mean it is a game. Also, just because someone "plays" a game doesn't mean that person must have fun with it. One of the possibilities of doing that is to pass the time.

 

[Sticky]

Going on what Totalbiscuit said on the issue: Games have failure states. There has to be a way to fail at your goal in order for it to be considered a 'game' purely. Even dying in a game and being forced to try a segment over is considered a failure state. Otherwise, you're not being engaged by the narrative. You cannot have any bearing on the narrative if it isn't possible to fail at what you are doing.

Then it's more like you're being led along in a very well-constructed themepark. Which is fine, nothing is wrong with themeparks, but I wouldn't call them a 'game'. You would be very hard-pressed to find a definition where walking in a themepark could be considered a 'game' unless you're quizzed on what you saw at the end.

That's what I think separates Gone Home with a game like The Stanley Parable. The Stanley Parable has failure states, it has dozens of them. You can fail in TSP by walking off the edge of a loading dock in the first minute of the game. Some of the 'good' endings in the game are endings where you specifically fail at what you are trying to accomplish. Or endings where the player character himself just gives up and quits.

Gone Home is okay if that's what you want in an interactive experience, but please don't try to pontificate at me that this is exactly the same type of game like TSP and then compare me to a whiny baby.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

You have your definitions, I have mine, but at the end of the day it's all semantics.

I'm gonna cut right in here and say that I find this sentence to be extremely dangerous, intellectually speaking.

My problem is that strictly adhering to one and only one definition tends to lead to a lot of side-tracking. Suddenly instead of just talking about what we're talking about, we're sitting here discussing definitions. It's fair enough to know how someone defines a word, but suddenly the entire conversation has been derailed so that we could go on this little tangent about a specific word that was used. Okay, so maybe what TB does isn't "reviews" by his definition, but they're the same basic concept. To insist that they aren't reviews just because they don't adhere to one's personal definition of the word is, frankly, egotistical. Suddenly TB's definition of the word is more important than the general concept of what we're getting out of the videos; which is a critique on the game in question. Heck, I would almost argue that his "WTF is" series is more informative than what he considers to be proper reviews, because I can actually see the game in action. I also really like how he goes into the options menu, because it can help call-out a game that is lacking options it would sorely need (like Rage having none, and I've heard Quantum Conundrum was lacking in graphical options as well). That can be a huge deal-breaker that many "reviews" don't even bother to mention usually.

Anyway, my point isn't that definitions are worthless, just that getting hung-up on specific definitions for something that can have broad meanings doesn't do any good. TB getting hung-up on how he does "first impressions" instead of "reviews" is like how people freak-out anytime I say that I'm gonna go get some ice cream at DQ, because it's SOFT SERVE! It's like, okay, maybe you're technically correct, but you still haven't pointed-out a flaw in my sentence as-is. I'm well-aware of the semantic differences between "ice cream" and "soft serve", but how many people are going to complain about wanting ice cream when they're given soft serve? Not enough to matter. I don't doubt that there are people who hate soft serve, but absolutely love ice cream (maybe even vice versa), but they are in a slim minority. Meanwhile, I watch TB's "WTF is" series to get an idea of whether or not a game is any good, therefore they are "reviews", even if only by a looser definition of the word. Sure he doesn't show-off the entire game or play to completion before giving an opinion on it, but that generally isn't necessary for knowing if a game is any good.

If that means he is overly specific for you fair enough. However, it is not done to separate or label things, but to clearly communicate a large amount of informational with only a handful of words. When TB says whether something is or isn't a game I immediately know quite a bit about the thing he is talking about, because he is clear with his definitions.

Yes, but he's also exclusionary with his definitions, which means that when he says that something isn't "X", it loses all value. Okay, so TB is saying that such-and-such "isn't a game", but he also has a very strict definition of the term that includes things that other people don't see as vital, so he might as well have been gargling Listerine and I'd have gotten the same value from his statement. Basically, where you feel that his strict definitions makes it easier to know what he's saying, I almost argue that it makes it less clear to know what he's talking about. I get that he wants to be understood by as broad of an audience as possible, but the problem is that a broad audience is going to have several people who all have their own interpretations. By keeping his definitions so strict (especially for something like his definition of a game), he narrows the scope of viewers who will know what he's talking about more-so than broadening it.

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(( Also, sorry for the delay in the reply. It's one of those things that was sitting in the back of my head, but then I'd never be thinking about it while actually at the computer. x_x ))

 

[Rooks]

So wait, farmville is then considered a game?